The silence woke her first.
Elowyn opened her eyes to discover the roaring blizzard had vanished, leaving behind the eerie, crystal stillness of a frozen dawn.
Pale rays of morning sunlight filtered through the gaps in her pine-bough barricade, illuminating the dust and frost floating in the air.
Against all odds, she was still breathing. She had made it through the night.
A spark of quiet victory flickered in her chest, only to be crushed by a sharp, violent cramp in her stomach.
Her body was running on empty, her throat raw and her limbs aching with a deep, bone-settling chill.
Yesterday’s nightmare flooded her senses, along with Nysa’s mocking ultimatum.
Fourteen sunrises to bring back a mate.
Elowyn let out a raspy, bitter breath through her cracked lips. She shoved the thought into the dark before it could crush her.
It was a fool’s errand anyway.
No male would ever look at a shiftless runt and see a mate. She had been reminded of her worthlessness every day of her life. Hoping for a savior was just a quick way to die.
"One thing at a time, Elowyn," she whispered, her voice barely audible in the cramped alcove. "First, find food. Then, worry about the rest."
Bracing her hands against the pine-needle floor, Elowyn pushed her sore body onto her knees. She couldn’t afford the luxury of despair. If she wanted to survive this day, she needed nourishments, and she needed to find it before her strength gave out completely.
Pushing aside the barricade, she crawled out into the cold, her breath blooming in pale clouds against the freezing air. She hated how ill-prepared she was, and the fact that her outfit held no real defense against the biting cold.
Brushing off the pine needles clinging to her skirt, her fingers bumped against a hard, familiar weight tied to the inside lining of her waistband. She froze, her heart hammering against her ribs as she searched for the source and pulled it out.
Her handmade bone-and-flint knife.
A cold wave of relief washed over her. In yesterday’s terror, she had completely forgotten she was wearing it. The weapon was crude, a leaf-shaped piece of flint lashed tight to a carved bone handle, far too small to slay a beast, but invaluable as a tool.
She wasn’t empty-handed after all.
Yippee!
Elowyn knew she didn’t have the gear or strength to stalk wild game, but she didn’t need to kill a beast to survive the morning. During a dark winter years ago in the IronFang tribe, when hunters returned with no kill, the late Chieftainess had taken her into the snow, and she could still hear the woman’s teachings in her mind.
Clutching the flint handle tightly, Elowyn approached a sturdy pine. She ran her fingers over the rough, frozen outer bark, letting the Chieftainess’s wisdom guide her hands.
Caution was everything.
Stripping a young tree or taking a full ring of cambium around the trunk would choke the wood and kill it, and the wild never forgave a reckless harvest. Those were the words of her chieftainess.
Kneeling onto the deep snow, Elowyn raised her knife and drove the flint blade into the seam in the bark. With a firm, downward pull, she pried away the outer gray crust. It cracked off in chunks, revealing the pale, moist, creamy layer hidden beneath.
Taking a small breath, Elowyn flattened her blade against the trunk and carefully shaved off long, vertical ribbons of the soft inner layer. The sap clung to her fingers, cool and resinous, releasing a sharp scent of both needle-pine and rich-earth.
Elowyn lifted a strip to her mouth and chewed.
She winced at the immediate burst of bitter, sap-heavy resin, but she forced her jaws to keep moving. Bit by bit, the fibrous pulp broke down, yielding tiny traces of starch and sugar that coated her raw throat with much needed moisture. It was a far cry from a roasted meat, but as she swallowed the thick paste, the sharp, hollow ache in her gut began to dull.
Working methodically, she shaved a handful of extra strips from the opposite side of the tree, carefully wrapping the surplus into a clean patch of cloth to save for later.
She was so grateful she had listened all those years ago.
For the first time since the palisade gates slammed shut behind her, a faint, genuine smile flickered across her lips. It was a small, quiet victory, a sign that she could fight for her own life. It wouldn’t sustain her forever, but it would keep her standing until she found something better.
With her immediate hunger temporarily relieved, Elowyn stood alone in the clearing, staring into the endless wall of white pines and gray sky.
What now?
Survival for the morning was secured, but fourteen sunrises remained on Nysa’s impossible clock. Elowyn snorted softly to herself, the sound turning to a puff of white mist in the freezing air.
"Honestly, the only way I’m ever returning back to the IronFang with a mate is if one drops from the sky, hits his head on a rock, and wakes up with atrocious taste," she rasped into the empty woods.
There was no world where anyone was claiming a shiftless runt like her. She had to be realistic.
She needed a far more sensible plan.
Maybe if she traveled far enough south, past the mountain ridge, she might stumble across a different tribe, a tribe so desperate for workers that they wouldn’t mind a shiftless runt taking up space in their camp.
So intent on mapping out her future, Elowyn’s senses lagged.
Her boot caught hard on a rigid loop hidden beneath the powder. With a high-pitched squeak, it sent her tumbling forward as she pitched face-first into a snowbank. Coughing and spitting out a mouthful of freezing slush, she pushed herself up on all fours, wiping her stinging cheeks and rubbing her icy nose.
She whipped around to hurl curses at whatever root had dared to ambush her. But as she cleared the snow from her eyes, her anger went with it.
It wasn’t a root, but a thick, braided vine coiled across the snow.
Huh?
A cold prickle of confusion washed over her. Vines out in the open winter were supposed to be frozen, brittle, and black as charcoal. But this one was supple and green.
Elowyn frowned, her gaze following the vine upward, and her mouth hung open in disbelief. Rising before her was a massive, sprawling tree. But unlike every other frozen, skeletal trunk that stood against the gray sky, this tree was alive.It burst with lush,emerald foliage and fragrant white blossoms, looking all the more like a warm summer morning trapped right in the middle of a freezing wasteland.
No way.
It defied nature.
Or was she hallucinating again?
Hypnotized by the strange phenomenon, Elowyn took a slow step forward to touch the smooth, green bark. Her foot slammed hard against a heavy mound buried at the base of the trunk.
She paused and looked down.
Sticking out from the untouched drift at the base of the blooming tree was a heavy fur-trimmed boot. And attached to that boot was the unmistakable, snow-dusted silhouette of a lying body.